Using Intercultural Rhetoric to Examine Translingual Practices of Postgraduate L2 Writers of English Estela Enea Kyle McIntoshb Ulla Connora aIndiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, 420 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA bUniversity of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL 33606, USA Abstract This pilot study applies the three tenets of intercultural rhetoric (i.e., texts must be studied in context; culture is complex and dynamic; written discourse encounters necessitate negotiation and accommodation) to an investigation of the translingual practices of four post-graduate-level second language (L2) writers of English. By using stimulated recall to probe the participants’ awareness and use of L1 and L2 academic conventions in the writing process, we were able to identify the negotiation strategies they employed and to understand the linguistic or cultural factors that influenced those choices. Our findings revealed that participants’ translingual negotiations varied, depending on their level of proficiency in English, field of study, and experience writing This is the author's manuscript of the article published in final edited form as: Ene, E., McIntosh, K., & Connor, U. (2019). Using intercultural rhetoric to examine translingual practices of postgraduate L2 writers of English. Journal of Second Language Writing, 45, 100664. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100664 2 academically in both their L1 and L2. Participants also tended to frame discussions of their academic writing in terms of both large, national cultures and small, disciplinary or classroom-based ones. Finally, this study illustrates how inquiries that highlight the social contexts and complexities of cross-cultural comparisons can be useful in operationalizing translingual concepts and developing evidence-based pedagogy for L2 writing. Introduction As our understanding of multilingual writing and writers continues to evolve, debates have arisen over the philosophical and, to a lesser extent, practical merits of translingualism and its perceived differences or similarities compared to second language (L2) writing (see Atkinson et al., 2015; Canagarajah, 2013, 2015; Gevers, 2018; Matsuda, 2014; Schreiber & Watson, 2018; Tardy 2017). Translingualism claims that multilingual writers use all of their linguistic and cultural repertoires to communicate successfully, thus repositioning “difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening” (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur, 2011, p.303). Case studies on translingual practices (e.g., Canagarajah, 2011; Lee & Canagarajah, 2018) have shown how multilingual writers manifest agency by negotiating with dominant writing conventions through the creative use of language, resulting in hybrid discourses and emergent interculturality. These studies contend that translingual negotiations are part of all learners’ mental capacity and occur even when outwardly invisible. 3 Recent case studies in L2 writing have found evidence of similar negotiations. Gentil’s (2018) research on the challenges facing Francophone students at an English- medium university in Quebec demonstrated the importance of making comparisons across languages and cultures as a way to help bilingual students learn to write in their disciplines. While the study agreed with translingual scholars about the need for “deftness in deploying a broad and diverse repertoire of language resources, and responsiveness to the diverse range of readers’ social positions and ideological perspectives” (Horner et al., 2011, p. 308), it also stressed “the value of distinguishing language differences at the level of registers, genres, and languages, and across historical, ontogenetic and moment-to-moment time scales” (Gentil, 2018, p. 126). Similarly, Rinnert and Kobayashi (2016) used empirical evidence to form a model of text construction in which multilingual writers’ different languages (L1/L2/L3/etc.) and knowledge of topic, genre, discipline, and social context all contribute to their decision- making. While these findings are compelling, more empirical research is needed to understand exactly how multilingual writers engage with their linguistic and cultural repertoires in order to develop pedagogical practices that better address students’ needs, particularly in English for academic purposes (EAP). The current pilot study joins the conversation about the complex processes involved in multilingual writing by contributing empirical evidence from four postgraduate-level L2 writers of English with varying levels of multiliteracy. Part of the motivation for this study was the question: Do all writers engage in translingual practices and, if so, do they possess a sense of purposeful, agentic involvement in the 4 reconstruction of writing conventions? Translingualism largely assumes both to be true, while the L2 writing research cited above holds that moving between languages, as well as within and across genres, can facilitate the development of L2 writing and its instruction, but does not necessarily lead to challenging or changing norms. We investigate these claims through the lens of Intercultural Rhetoric (IR), which is based on a dynamic conceptualization of culture that differs markedly from earlier research that defined culture largely in national or ethnic terms (Connor, 1996). A useful concept for IR has been Holliday’s (1999) distinction between “large” cultures, which are based on ethnic, national, or international group features, and “small” cultures, which are rooted in the activities and discourses of social groupings (e.g., business culture, classroom culture). The complex interactions of these different cultural forces are important for writing teachers to consider, especially when their classes include students from diverse backgrounds. McIntosh, Connor, and Gokpinar-Shelton (2017) and You (2018) have remarked on the usefulness of IR in developing new pedagogical frameworks for translingual practices. In this pilot study, we examine the negotiation processes of the four participants as they relate to the theoretical premises of IR, namely, that texts must be understood in their specific context, and that both large and small cultures have an impact on the negotiation and accommodation strategies of writers (Connor, 2011). For the purposes of this study, we were interested primarily in participants’ reported awareness of differences in L1 and L2 writing conventions, the choices they made while writing, and the impact of these choices on their final products. By this design, we can test 5 translingualism’s assumption that one’s multiple languages are not separate entities. The study was guided by the following research questions: (Q1) What kinds of negotiations do postgraduate L2 English writers undertake (if any)? And (Q2) which large- and/or small-cultural factors most influence these writers’ negotiations? Thus, we use IR to examine translingual practices in L2 writing. Study Participants: Our participants were three masters’ level students and one visiting scholar at a large Midwestern University. One of the students was an Arabic-speaking woman from Jordan in the field of museum studies (hereafter Reema, a pseudonym); another was a Chinese woman who studied biomedical sciences (Xu); the third was a Serbian woman in the TESOL program (Jana). The fourth participant was a female visiting scholar from China with a background in English language teaching (Cate). The three graduate students were at the end of the first year of their programs, and the visiting scholar had spent one year at the university. Only Reema and Xu were required to take a graduate-level EAP writing course. All participants had begun studying English in their home countries in middle school. Jana had been in the U.S. for four years in a non-academic environment. Based on EAP placement results, Reema was a high intermediate learner and the least advanced of the four, while Jana was the most proficient orally, followed by Xu and Cate (see Table 1). Table 1: English proficiency levels of participants Participant Program Test + Scores EAP Scores EAP Placement 6 Museum TOEFL Total: 57 Total: 53/60* Writing Course (FA Reema Studies IBT 2016) Writing: 14 Essay: 3/4 Grade: A- Biomedical TOEFL Total: 96 Total: 55/60 Writing Course (SP Xu sciences IBT 2018) Writing: 20 Essay: 3/4 Grade: A- Total: 59/60 Jana TESOL TOEFL Total: 108 Exempt Essay: 4/4 Cate N/A TEM-8 Total: 78/100 N/A N/A * Reema took an older version of the EAP placement test. We converted her score into the new 60-point scale for comparison. Materials: We collected graduate-level research papers written in English for courses taken by the three graduate student participants. We requested drafts and final versions of those papers with or without teacher comments. A prior writing sample in English was available from Reema only. Cate’s paper from a linguistics course constituted the material in her case, along with drafts of a paper that she was writing for publication. Data collection: We first administered, to all four participants, a survey about their writing history, processes, and goals. We asked questions about their awareness and use of writing conventions in both their L1 and English to get a better sense of how (much) they move between those languages. In the follow-up interviews, two of the researchers sat down with each participant in front of a computer screen displaying her paper. These interviews